The Cordyceps mushroom is best known for its gruesome eating habits: famously, its spores infect insects and kill them, growing into fully-fledged fruiting bodies that sprout from the insects’ flesh. But Cordyceps also has significant medicinal potential, containing a bioactive compound cordycepin which could potentially be developed into powerful new antiviral medications and cancer drugs. The mushrooms are rare in the wild, and until now, growing healthy Cordyceps in the lab has been a challenge which impedes scientific research—but Professor Mi Kyeong Lee of Chungbuk National University and her team including Dr. Ayman Turk, publishing today in Frontiers in Microbiology, have found a way to grow these elusive fungi in a controlled setting without losing their potency.
Click here for original story, Mushroom that grows on insects could help develop new anti-viral medications and cancer drugs
Source: Phys.org